I like to begin leadership agility classes with the following exercise. I ask small groups to work together to identify the different items that have experienced the changes in the table below. About half of the time, the groups make an interesting but flawed assumption – they believe that the data refers only to their industry.

A frame of reference is “the overall context in which a problem or situation is placed, viewed, or interpreted. A too-narrow frame may leave out critical factors, whereas a too-broad frame may include many irrelevant distractions.”[1] In the cases I described, the groups had a too-narrow frame of reference.

The ability to choose an appropriate frame of reference is a key leadership agility skill, especially as it relates to two specific competencies: context-setting agility and creative agility. Context setting agility involves determining the optimal scope of an initiative as well as seeing connections “outside the box” of one’s specific function, company or industry. Creative agility requires thinking outside of habitual assumptions.

The challenge that we all face when it comes to frame of reference is our immediate tendency to take what Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) calls an “inside view” where we solve problems and make decisions by searching for evidence within our specific circumstances and our own experiences. This kind of thinking will be extremely problematic in the Fourth Industrial Revolution where new ways of doing things are being merged from different industries and technologies at unprecedented speeds and dramatically changing the ways in which all work is being done. The ability to agilely shift contexts and think with creativity will significantly enhance leadership responsiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Unfortunately, as much as organizations strive to overcome “business as usual”, operate outside of “silos” and to encourage “out of the box” thinking, the inside view is a problematic bias as the pervasiveness of these phrases (and my exercise) will attest. It’s quite natural to solve problems and make decisions based on what we know. However, in doing so we are failing to account for what Donald Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknowns”.

So how does one take an outside view? In terms of researching a problem, one way to take an outside view is to look for data that contains information outside of your own thinking and: 1) don’t discount it; 2) consider how it might be relevant.

In terms of collaborating with others, outside view thinking means to move from “What?” to “What else?”. In other words, you must challenge your initial conclusions about “what” you think something is and then consider “what else” it could be. A good initial “what else” question is what would a person with a different frame of reference see? To move from an inside view or frame of reference to an outside view/frame of reference, one must be intentional about questioning initial assumptions and encourage the expression of multiple viewpoints. This ability to shift contexts agilely among multiple frames of reference without being attached to any single frame allows for a perspective outside of conventional “wisdom” and makes it easier to be more creatively agile.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will require new approaches to new and complex problems. In order to combat the tendency of inside view thinking, we must hold our frames of reference loosely, while going outside our frames to question the sufficiency of our own knowledge and experiences.

Oh. The answers to the table? Here they are.

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[1] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/frame-of-reference.html